And sometimes we don’t really know ourselves at all. Many of the movies we think we’ll love turn out to be utter duds.

On the flip side, some of those films we only see begrudgingly because a friend has kept nagging us turn out to be our all-time favourites.

This list is about those films people keep telling you about until you finally cave in and see what all the fuss is about. Turns out your friends are right… most of the time.

Here are the films on Netflix UK to watch if you want to impress people.

1. Drive (2011)

Picture: Bold Films

Like a muscle car jumping from 0 to 60mph in seconds, Drive went from indie word-of-mouth cult darling to box-office hit in the time it took Ryan Gosling’s nameless character to say… well, nothing, actually. Worthy of every piece of praise flung its way.

2. Blue Velvet (1986)

Picture: MGM

David Lynch’s wonderful and frightening look at what goes on behind the white picket fence is the definition of a cult classic – no one went to see it when it was released, but it is now loved by almost every cinephile.

3. Battle Royale (2000)

Picture: Toei Company

Whenever you tell people, like I do all the time, that you love the Hunger Games movies, there’s always someone who chirps up that you really ought to see Battle Royale. And they are absolutely right. It’s bloody (really bloody) brilliant.

4. Hard Eight (1998)

Picture: MGM

There’s a lot to enjoy in Paul Thomas Anderson’s first film, including decent performances by his favourite future collaborators Philip Baker Hall, John C Reilly and Philip Seymour Hoffman (although the latter only has a quick cameo), but it’s nowhere near the level of Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood. Still, one for the ‘Oh, I prefer their early work’ crowd.

5. Sicario (2015)

Picture: Lionsgate

For Drive in 2011, see Sicario four years later, when everyone kept asking you, ‘Have you seen Sicario yet?’ To be fair to them, it was a good question, as it’s a riveting watch that never takes its audience in the direction they expect.

One of the most misleading titles in crime drama history, there’s hardly any violence in A Most Violent Year, just lots and lots of Oscar Isaac’s heating-oil businessman furrowing his brow. And yet, you can’t take your eyes off that brow.

7. Under The Skin (2013)

Picture: StudioCanal

I’d call Jonathan Glazer’s mesmerising film cinematic Marmite but the comparison doesn’t really hold up; love it or hate it, lots of people have tried Marmite – nobody watched Under The Skin. The fools.

8. Anomalisa (2015)

Picture: Paramount

Whenever The Guardian names a film its best of the year, as they also did with Under The Skin, you can safely bet as much money as it lost at the box office that no one went to see it. That was the fate for Charlie Kaufman’s stop-motion animated delve into the human condition. But if you really love a movie, you don’t care who saw it in cinemas, so give this bizarre curio a go and judge for yourself.

9. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Picture: Warner Bros

Unlike some of these other films, Pan’s Labyrinth, or ‘El laberinto del fauno’ as your pretentious Spanish-speaking pals like to call it, was a monstrous monster box office hit, a mix of thrilling fantasy and the almost unwatchable violence of war.

10. Dr Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964)

Picture: Columbia

You’ve probably been inadvertently quoting Stanley Kubrick’s comedic masterpiece for years even if you haven’t got round to actually watching it, but there’s no time like the present, particularly given some of the world’s most powerful nations are currently run by hot-headed idiots.